Canada, immigration raids and deportations are not entertainment!

It was revealed last month that Vic Toews, Canada’s Public Safety Minister, approved the raid, carried out for the Canada Border Services Agency’s reality television series, Border Security.

The revelation highlights the issue of immigration and immigrant rights in Canada. Where are we on the issues? What kind of society have we become when a federal minister approves a TV show that violates the weak, and when such violation becomes part of our living room experience. Entertainment.

After the revelation, the BC Civil Liberties Association filed a formal complaint with the federal Privacy Commissioner on behalf of the migrant worker who was filmed.

“Federal agents should not come crashing into people’s workplaces and homes with commercial TV crews filming their actions like some sort of action movie,” said Josh Paterson, Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. “That violates people’s privacy rights – in this case, the rights of a vulnerable migrant worker – and we think it violates Canada’s privacy law. The federal government must respect the rights of every person it deals with, regardless of their immigration status. Mr. Mata Duran has filed a complaint to the federal Privacy Commissioner alleging that the government’s use of a reality TV crew to film his arrest and interrogation was unlawful and we will pursue this complaint in his absence from Canada.”

Toews defended the filming on the grounds that some of the people in the show do not have legal immigration status in Canada.

Paterson responded: “The government can’t pick and choose whose rights it respects. It has a duty to respect everybody’s rights when it enforces the law, regardless of what someone is alleged to have done.”

Please speak out and uphold our time-honoured tradition of supporting basic human rights and dignity for all. After all of us, except the first peoples, are either immigrants of children and descendants of immigrants.

Tell Vic Toews, CBSA and the Conservatives that immigration raids and deportation can’t be entertainment!